My Big Funny Summer Reading List

[malignd at aol.com]

The End of Vandalism, Tom Drury
All of P.G. Wodehouse, of course.
The Hamlet (Faulkner and very funny)
Thomas Berger, most of his stuff but perhaps: Who is Teddy Villanova?
The Poor Mouth, The Third Policeman, Flann O'Brien
After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, Aldus Huxley
Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell -- not laugh out loud funny. Dry, and it grows on you, and you can read it all summer.  It's twelve novels.
The Sporting Club, Thomas McGuane
Flash and Filigree, Terry Southern
A Cool Million, Nathanael West


If I think of more, I'll post them.


-----Original Message-----
From: kelber <kelber at mindspring.com>
To: pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sun, Jun 2, 2013 5:18 pm
Subject: My Big Funny Summer Reading List


Been dealing with some emotionally rough stuff lately, and need some diversion. 
I can handle reading about Nazis, torture, toxic waste, and Man's inhumanity to 
Man during the days, but at night I need some reading matter that won't keep me 
lying awake in agony until dawn. Only it's damn hard to find books that are both 
intelligent and genuinely funny. There's plenty of humor in Pynchon, or in books 
like Catch-22, say, but it's accompanied by stuff that's too dark for me in my 
present fragile-minded state. I can think of plenty of funny movies and TV shows 
(Arrested Development, Season 4, being the latest). And years later, I still 
laugh at the Mad Magazine offerings I loved as a kid - heavy on parody and 
cranky sarcasm. But it's really hard to think of many laugh-out-loud books. 
Offhand, I'm thinking David Lodge (Nice Work, Small World, etc.); Alison Lurie 
(Imaginary Friends. Probably should read more of her); Kingsley Amis's Lucky 
Jim; No Name, by Wilkie Collins. I'm sure we can all recommend lots of great 
books, but how many at the top of our lists are genuinely funny, with no 
depressing elements [NOT Pale Fire, for example]. Tangent to the 
is-or-isn't-literature-morally-edifying conversation, is there something about 
humor (wordplay, parody, genuinely funny insights about character) that's too 
lowbrow for high-minded literary types to bother with?

So, any recommendations of really funny books that aren't Shakespearean comedies 
of error (sorry), and that don't remind one even obliquely of genocide or 
cruelty to animals or toxic waste? 

Laura

 

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